Rwy'n rhoi, drwy'n rwy'n storfurdd o'r fawr, tempo Bruwyr Blym Bridwyr i niw cwysig o bain i Astwrdd, Llywodraeth – ac Majesty
Rwy'n rhoi i niwn Cymru o enviwyr Cymраeth – ac rwy'n rhoi i niwn eistedd Softy Opening
blwyddyn hefyd�你要r hyn yn leoli beyond ac Mawr ar gyfer cyfle-oddydd cyfu y cleiff ymyr
yma – fund y mae'r rhwyh Rad интересно i niinton gyfund fнийaru ac rhywatchu arludedau
ac hedgwch o dybestiaill gyda meddwl flynach am y g exhibits o unfiliadidd gan fragile y hoedd yn unig adonniad.
Isilswr i cair ôl..
.. mae'n amlhad yn yr un cyfr recon ni'w gilydd.
Mae'n dweud sydd y ni yn wneud i gael?
Mae'r mynd wedi ar fiannodd ar draws yardid yr ysgrifennid iddiol pan oedd ei..
.. cyfränig amnoll yn iawn eu sinstron wedi bod cychwyn.
Fref hun tra llawer hefyd â gyrdynt, ond ni ei unlikelym i'r tympur ar www.duvert
werth-to-warf.
Rydych i'a addysgu.
Mae'r byw Taiwerd i'r byw gynhyrch but whichever llraff iawn,
sydd y trofwyr bod yn fwyaf aras archif آith gan bensar gwn i wri?
Ac tight golf i nadd neu rydw i ensembleun y gwahanol?
Pulwyd trwy'r ddeddi
[♪
Din angen yw'r ffordd gwy tentio'r f continents
haf ychydig ddim yn yr un bwysig rydw i'n fien ffordd?
Id景olain gwybmyd Lords分鐘 sy'n gwirio'r cerddi-fanna업
rhes wrote a gwasanaf context ar lolwg am wneud i gynradd yn ymwysig.
Felly, sy'n gweithio i fod i'r llwyddiir o beth angen y g ashes
Darwy'r wneud, wel i eich codd fantermol ar y keptire i'n lleol?
Mae ddim yn linell findingi ac mae'n ier��r Фadir delsg denominio a rhanion.
Goi'n rhanienne du cael ei Gwyrdod, ac wedi hwnnw eu gyreth,
i fydül ei somebody tiddun refugees i'r cynllun hwn cobeiddol.
So gündodwr fel'r newid i'rFlowaidd cyflifeth,
pan edrych gydag ein gyrweith ytersprobiad
Ac then when I matched the polytechnic, a guy called Bill Jay who was also the editor of hyung camera came around gave backgrounds and
one of the people who talked at great length you.
Was Tony-
ae Jones,
and then suddenly I saw these pictures which almost had a sort of spatial feel and look of these American photographers,
but I actually done in England.
I couldn't believe how union How compelling these photographs were and immediately became a huge fan and convert
to his way of looking and thinking.
Bydd yn cael ei fod ar wazosol gyfargoedd a mae weithgor ar ôl I.
byddiwch moed nifer</i choreig lodd,
yr oed bodnod a roedden ni weld eich meddwl am ran ynddo,
hefyd roedden ni'n chymru...
Na gael eu bod wedi hyn i fynd i'w tir-odda lim ondo mewn intensifau
o bobl gyda'r rychmaln.
дальше yw ALL Ysgrifen,
yr aesiannyddio hyn yn credu tro y gêmru am y cw unhappyadau
roedda unordeb dyfu wedi Ihrorion ac yn taeth o'u Siw skull
roedd o ditch buscaradau HD 65.
Ryfwn ni'n ei gynhyrch a neud yn tro rece
bynt bod wetha bod tejawch i felchogir chi cryyddyn ni'n ymwneud ond r Adrian Jan-Dylan ond rwy'r ymwneud aktif Razióson yn adnod yn methu gweithio am yのi cyntaf- yblados influences e sesiadau allan,
цвет ar amser, fe wnaeth o'r Gair in outrageous Antrag bought bydd pndyn ni'n sw geleis, a eu освas contactedau fydl yn llatynau hynny,
syl baraeth mleid i dda colleagues, mewn Ar trif, ac arhal clinical neu jyst iddyn gallwn,
pan pwysig e—verysg.
ychwanegwch, oedd y peth ymlaen i'w rhaid i'r ffordd.
Felly, ychydig i'r ffordd y gwaith y gallwn y rhaid i'r ffordd yn ymlaen i'r ffordd,
a ddod o'r newydd o bwysig bwysig ffordd,
ac wrth gwrs, rhaid i'n ffordd i'r ffordd yn y bwysig,
ond rhaid i'r ffordd yn y 70-tym,
a'r 80-tym ar y cyfle,
ac rhaid i'r rhaid i'r ffordd yn y rhaid i'r ffordd.
Felly, rhaid. Diolch i verb
gyda y lleigblfarepa yng ngharryliaeth norauurgu amirionedd,
adnod i findingod iddo yn ch вжеid сейчас ynghylch.
Cadw i'ch gyffredin iaiyd a guddiw o weithiau.
Udi-ddiw, roedd cy completes gweld y profils unitedwr meryρωaeth
hanes cyhoeddid mewn fajr ffordd gyfyrdd hynny.
Felly, ystod y bobl i'n credu launches o'r ffordd ar hills yermeidon
?, am gwyn ll Children Anthropologengmbaidd,
a wyda chi'n gallu rhaid i wneud hynny.
Beth oedd ddweud hynny o gymryd yft!
Ond pythonig oedd eu bobl hyffrwysig oherwyddfamilych beth mae'n brydrwyddon fynd i gyd,
no'r ddesrannau, ond cookwydwn i fi긴 teulu'r effigial Ac dwi'n ei ddal Jaga Sir ac D minor
i am hyffWH
yearfell aornol sharea ei amddano ar gyfer gいきnion gŷt.
Y cael ei gwacasol du i gwleidio bodaint mewn cul peth yn gymheliadau â'i ddweud hwn,
amgario'r ardal h spellidoedd lawr.
The liter commendden u Can Fersible Diṣet Roedd Hopu ap Sem catcheb i gyfrind pediffadu
Fe wneud nad yw'ch cymwyll eich went Posiddur hoseid hi yn yn gweithio na lchyddi extension eich drwsio sydd
Title 170 As far as I could see it this in terms of culture, in terms of character
these are the same people that I am studying this is the same English character
But I'm seeing now.
Most people would be... I suspect would be surprised by that,
because we tend to think that we live in a much more vulgar brush age,
where there's not much deference.
Obviously he was a photographer of class as much as I think.
Yeah.
And you think essentially people still behave the same at the sea site?
Because what I was looking for were the commonalities in the English psyche,
gan rhai boblffau, o courses, gair gwir,matebเราol.
Ar ddiwedd wedi cael adapteraeth clyweddion cyfnodi
y mamrestau, a gwnaeth bod y clywodraeth fil iddynt mewn ddealledd,
yn i gofynodd y ddeallad, ac e distractions lle feddwl grassail yn gofyn contestants
你要na anualch receiptnach y bydd y gallai ddeallad o'ch g弞u sy'n granadair позol.
Ac y bobl yn ei mewn hoffa amser,
fel fod yn gorfod ddysh'n bik organ,
a gwnaeth i washer ar dryddolion godpl Erwed-i Gwyrddings Llywodraeth,
When you'll get a little bit of honour
혼 fwy oherwydd y fynd am ent graphics
ddigonwad hwn yn yourg, gan hyggwr i ddiwrnodd, yn rhoi,
cydnoddaf energiaeth ar y studio
ac yn orientio yn fy ngylldal y maenach o le僱b
yr eich cyットyn.
Mae ei gนw sy'n ele Mercedes,
mae'r anodd gyda ni'n Segoryn Genedl
ac mae oedd eisiau ar y c fairly
gnoi'r hidra o lawr ac yn bule!
Felly wneudを ddim achčer Pa毒
茂 wnaeth ychydig ar commence
rwsrwy anodd yr anodd
roeddeion hyn, lle modd am y�ai hwnnw e fach pw kab intercept ac mae gweld yn dodio massydd traileru gallar
roeddaeth ein oedwedd rydym yn uddiwynau gwyrgyntiau youroeddau?
O automobile allan?
Na'llDRÙU cwisellwch â felly rhesymiolesa rheiffeu i armee vasise gweithbeth,
beth gallwn weithhef answerport yma os mwyn i chi yn eu cyfle of y Gymraeg ni allan y mendigul.
Ewch.uchadaith!
Myfain, sy'n gwneud, ac y perled
mewn yr lle i wneud hynny digwyddio'r g ganwysprobl
neu ond yn coisiau myfreg.
Am y lle i mneud, angen myfreg��
Go yna fy hefyd.
Miherwch i'w gwneud hwn.
Caning om er mwyn rei hwn a hwn.
Dyma e'n cael ei moddd mhrifeth a le bydd gen nhw bod
10, commonly the glimpse of those exterior things that you were talking about earlier.
Well, there now are people who call themselves visual anthropologists, of course.
I am not actually out of...
Well, know, the academics who call themselves visual anthropologists,
which essentially means they make ethnographic films.
Or in some cases they get their subjects, if you like,
the people, the societies, the communities that they're studying to make films of
each other and themselves and take photographs and whatnot.
I'm not sure, I mean I did a collaboration with you recently, I was supposed to, Martin was doing this for Vice Magazine, which apparently is something terribly cool, I didn't even know.
But it was Martin's photographs and I was sort of providing text of the English.
And I kept annoying Martin by providing text which was about what the people in the photographs were saying, or might be saying.
You know, well there are lots sitting there in the rain waiting for something, you know, they're all saying typical to each other.
That wasn't annoying at all, I like that. Perhaps it annoyed Vice.
But so I'm not sure, I don't think so entirely, but then I look at photographs like these and I think well actually maybe they can, you know, because it does, but it jumps out at me and I don't know if that's because I've been studying this culture, I've been studying this national character.
Does it jump out at everybody?
I mean what I like about your book, of course, which maybe laugh out loud, because all having spent so long watching and photographing the English, you basically where they're put into words, what I attempt to photograph,
is this fundamental thing, and I think there are two words that I say are quite essential, is the vulnerability of the English and the sort of pomposity, and my ambiguity towards them.
I mean I sort of love the English and annoyed by them at the same time, and that ambiguity of course is, I hope, at the core of what I try and do with my photographs about the English,
because the danger is you go into sort of PR land where you end up doing photographs and you look like PR pictures, and at the same time I don't hate the English and I respect them,
so I want to have some fun because that vulnerability, which I often ascribe to say the great ability of stand-up comics, or someone like Tony Hancock, who's one of my favourite comedians,
he was able to put his finger on the pomposity of the British or the English, so succinctly that it's that kind of thread that if you like is the thing that I'm trying to do,
and that's what you express so well in your book.
One reason why I started filming, for example, I did a film called Think of England about 12 years ago, was because the banter you encounter when you're going around is so hilarious,
I thought this is almost like a waste, so why don't I just record it at the same time?
So even he found something that you can't, I mean I was thinking, God this is awful when I looked at these, you know, a picture really is worth a thousand words,
I've written this 400 odd page book, if I could take photographs I wouldn't have had to, I could have done it in, what's, I don't know, a thousand, I can't do maths, but anyway, whatever it might be,
it could have been considerably fewer pages, but even you found that you needed the words.
Oh definitely, yeah, in the Hebden Bridge book because I worked with my partner, we went to and got involved, in fact one of the issues that became a problem for us at the end is that we were so involved in this one particular chapel,
Prince of the Mesnes Chapel, Susie was starting to run the Sunday School, I was doing talks that the elders of the chapel, and they're all getting old and dying off,
mistook our interest in their chapel as being one that we wanted to carry it on, we were basically, you know, we weren't religious, we weren't Methodists,
but we just got involved because when you show up there there's so many things that need doing, we ended up doing it, and that was an error in so far that it was misinterpreted as being us wanting to carry it on,
and that became an issue with one particular elders at the end, and that's in a sense a lesson learned that however much you are involved with a situation, you're never part of it, you're always an outsider,
although sharing that information and hearing what people say is so essential to learning about what we're thinking.
And that's even effectively studying your own native culture, you know, you're not in some remote, uncomfortable, unpronounceable part of the world, are you? You're effectively at home,
and still you can feel like a bit of an outsider. You know, I am very middle-classicals, and in the end I wanted to do a body of work, having done a rural community with Hepton Bridge,
and then a working-class community with The Last of Swords, The Beachpitchers, I wanted to do something about my own tribe, and went and did a project about the middle class in the 80s,
when of course they were redefining themselves, they were sort of, you know, we were all children of Thatcher if you like, even I didn't like this Thatcher, and part of that was therapeutic whereby I was able to examine my own background
and sort of come to terms with it better, still using the ambiguity on the contradictions that I've just already outlined, and that was a fascinating period for me because, you know, many things about the middle class that I liked,
many things that I disliked, and I was able to use my prejudices, which are always such an incredible part of who we are, to use those as the vehicles to express and find the right subject matter to accumulate this sort of jigsaw puzzle
of the middle class pictures which become a book and an exhibition.
I mean, on that outsider kind of cusp thing, how much do you think Tony Ray Jones, I mean, because he always seemed to me to be on that outsider, even though he was brought up in English, at a very tricky time as a child that's been in Christ's Hospital, got bullied and stuff,
went to America, came back with that kind of outsider's eye, not just formally, but he did cast a sort of very cold eye almost on Britain, would you agree with?
Yeah, but here's, I mean, one of the great advantages of going away and coming back is you come and see something that's very familiar with the stranger's eye, so you have that fantastic combination of familiarity and an objective viewpoint,
and that, I think, was the essential secret as to why he was able to photograph the English so well in the late 60s having spent four to five years in America,
and likewise, when I came back from the UK, I'd been two and a half years in Ireland, and just coming back to the UK was much more exciting in 1983 when I returned after going, leaving Hebdo Bridge to live in Ireland for two years.
The clichés are usually clichés because they're true, there's a truism in that, and that's why I'm attracted to them, and I guess I always use them as my starting point, perhaps within that, you can subvert it slightly and give it a little twist and a freshness and a story,
but at the same time, without those clichés, without that knowledge and baggage of what we know about society, you wouldn't be able to read these pictures as effectively.
Well, if the stereotypes had no truth to them whatsoever, you wouldn't be able to find the photographs that you take, it's not as though you staged them, is it?
Yeah, no, no, they're for real.
But you cancel that and leave out all the stuff?
One thing that's interesting is I have a much bigger career in France, and one reason why I do that is because they perceive me as pulling the leg of the English, and they appreciate that a lot more than even the English do,
so that is one reason why, I mean, there are other historical things like they like photography more, but that's one reason why I go down better in France than the UK.
But people also get offended, I mean, it's great to say it with you, I mean, so that may glee effect sometimes with you, where people say you shouldn't be showing the working class on such a bad light, you shouldn't be patling it.
Of course, people always say that, but I mean, it always tickles me that, you know, you go to the beach, you go to the supermarket and say, how dare you show these cynical pictures, you know.
People go to wars and famines and they show squalor and they exploit situations to the full. I mean, we all exploit it to a certain degree.
That is not a question, because it's the perfect norm thing to do. You know, that is what photojournists do. They can actually show the horrors of the world.
Surely, in a sense, if you're asking about morality of who and what we are and why we're photographing things, that's as questionable as going to a supermarket or a beach.
Yeah, but I would imagine that sort of great photographers, including yourself, would go beyond, surely show beyond the stereotype. I mean, Tollyway Jones certainly does come in first.
You affirm it, but at the same time, you bring something new to it. You know, that's why I'm always attracted to clichés, and I did this project called Common Sense, where I actually went around European countries just trying to photograph the clichés.
And that was quite a lot of fun, because when you start thinking about clichés, you know, you have to identify them and then find them. For example, in England, you know, the bowler hat is one.
It's actually really hard to find anyone wearing a bowler hat. You have to go to an agriculture show or a horseship in July. Well, true, yes.
But you can't win here anyway, because if you, you know, Martin gets accused of being too cruel to the English, I get accused of, even though I'm actually very critical of English throughout this book, you know, I say one tiny thing in praise of English, and I get, you know, slammed for it.
It's this weird sort of anti-patriotism thing that we do. Well, we're actually a nation of positive patriotism, because I did a survey on this. But, you know, we have this sort of habit of national self-flagilation, and I only get taken to task when I actually say something nice about the English, and then everybody comes down on me.
But that's partly because the English just love to moan, you know? We like to moan about everything, don't we? Yes, include their own photographers. Of course, I wouldn't expect anything else. Of course it's just a whatnot. We're a fair game, yeah.
And does it take a certain amount of time? I mean, I'm going to talk about the black and white thing in a minute, but I remember talking to Joe Meravits and Stephen Shore, and they both said the same thing about the photographs, that when they first took them, and particularly when Stephen Shore, his work was shown in America, I mean, it was uproar, and he said it takes, you know, when you show someone something at the time no one wants to say it, but 20 years later it suddenly becomes quaint.
I mean, is there something like that going on here? With my work generally? To me, they're kind of like one big show. I think Tony Ray Jones has always been appreciated. I mean, he's obviously had a bigger platform with this exhibition, and he's never had, strangely, a big show in London until now, since the ICO.
Another particularly English thing, I think, not too sort of.
Yeah, so he's probably, you know, shown more in France and other countries than the UK, so we've corrected that disbalance, which is welcome, of course.
But the notion of nostalgia, can we look at these photographs without that prism of nostalgia?
I mean, first off, is the black and white thing. I mean, we have to explain that in those days, in the 70s, serious photography was done in black and white. It only really got going in the late 70s when suddenly the lights, the shore and mirrors were given museum shows,
and probably more so than those two, Eggleston, with his famous show in Mover in 76. And that gave the stamp of approval for the art world, the photography museum world, to say that colour could be serious then.
But, you know, so when I was starting out, black and white was the only option, and it's only in the 80s that I changed the colour myself, and that was partly inspired by the movement of these, the Eggleston shore, et cetera, being taken seriously.
And once I moved to colour, I never went back. So inevitably, there's, you know, black and white pictures do have a more nostalgic feel, but you could also say it makes them somewhat timeless.
But for me, now, colour and the brashness of modern society has to show the colour. You know, for me, it's an essential part of my interpretation of the world out there.
Is it fair to say that you don't immerse yourself so much in a society that you perhaps did when you were in Hebdenwood?
Well, up to a point, you're right. But recently, I mean, the biggest project I've done in the last decade has been four years' work on the black country. I mean, I've actually come in tonight from making a film about a bus full of pensioners who are going from
Wolverhampton to Westminster on their turkey and tinsel, a five-day trip. So I'm immediately going back by breakfast time tomorrow. I'll be back on the making the film. So I've spent four years photographing, making films about and working with people in the black country.
So that's an incredibly working-class area in the UK. I mean, West Bromwich, which is where the people I'm working with are based, is probably the least middle-class town in the whole of the UK. It doesn't have a costa, no bookshop in it. It's really, in terms of middle-class tick, box ticking, it's got virtually zero.
So I'm actually very much enjoying working there and doing that, and making the films is an essential part of that take because the dialogue and the narrative which you experience is so important.
There's still photographs can't include it, so making films are able me to tell the stories about the full coach trip. We went and did a film about a pigeon fancier who sells his pigeons in Mongolia.
So we needed to have the narrative because it's such a brilliant story. This guy breathes pigeons. He's really well known in Moxley, which is in the black country.
He goes to Mongolia. He's treated as a VIP because he's such a brilliant pigeon breeder, and he's banquets a lady in his honour. And this guy thinks he's unbelievable. He's never seen anything like it.
So it's wonderful to experience and witness that, and this will be shown in Walsall Art Gallery, which is in the black country, when we do the show and the films will be an integral part of that exhibition.
So strangely enough, in the last four years, I've gone back to being a community photographer.
One of the sadder things about the show, which we should talk about, is that it's a very young life, it ends very abruptly and sadly. Probably before he reached his peak. Is there any way of anticipating where he might have went or where he would have shot me if I went in the colour, I would imagine?
He did shoot colour, of course, as we know. I imagine he would continue being a photographer, but it's very likely because he was very interested also in film.
He'd have gone and become a filmmaker. He was fascinated by films. He watched these a lot and loved a lot from them, and I imagine, had he have lived, he'd have gone on to be a filmmaker as well.
And as an English game, maybe should bring Greg in here.
From the various interviews that we've had, he had an eccentric sense of humour, and we can tell from his notes that he identified very much with English eccentricity and saw it as a very positive thing and recognised it very much in himself.
He was prone to behaving quite oddly at times, but people found it very funny a lot at the time and found him very endearing because of his sense of humour, which was a counterpoint, I think, to sometimes quite abrasive personality as well.
He spoke his mind continually and was very confident in his ability as a photographer, particularly when he started working on this English project.
So it is tragic that he wasn't able to see it recognised in the way that it has been now.
I mean, he did go to Christ's Hospital, which is probably one of the most eccentric schools in the UK, and strangely enough, quite recently in the last five years, I've also photographed at Christ's Hospital.
And this is a school that used to be in London. It used to horseshoom. They still wear yellow socks and white ties.
Yes, it's an amazing place, and I imagine that has a profound effect. Although he didn't like it, so it's said, it has to have a big effect on your whole personality.
We've only got a few minutes left, but we've touched on class, but we haven't really talked about class, which is there all through his work with Aiden.
Well, I love the whole class issue, of course, and I very much... When I did the project on the middle classes, it was much...
Basically, here I was, a documentary photographer, working in the UK, and I noticed immediately there was this massive gap between the life that I was experiencing and the photographs that I was seeing by my colleagues.
And part of my job, I think, was to try and correct that, and it seemed to me back in the early 80s, or the mid-80s, when I thought about this a lot, that the middle class has been entirely overlooked,
because most photographs are fundamentally middle class, even at the working class that they've promoted themselves.
And it's very easier to sort of photograph the wealthy people, the people at Ascot, because that's another subject matter, or indeed to return to your roots and to photograph your peer group.
And the people in the middle just basically got missed out. And the whole sort of consumer society, so I thought, why is it certain subjects are overlooked?
And part of my work in the 80s was to try and address these disbalances, and that's why I came up with two major projects, photographing consumerism and photographing the middle classes.
And these were things that were very much emerging in those times, so it felt poignant to do this in the mid-80s.
Of course, they'd gone on and grown and dominated society even further. So part of me has a responsibility as a documentary photographer or anthropologist to actually record and show what's going on in the world.
And one of the things we're doing in the black country is we just spend a day in Tescos, because Tescos is by far the biggest shop and influence in terms of many social aspects of the black country.
And it's very easy just to go to a chain factory or some old factory that talks about the roots of the black country. We've done that, but of course going to a huge Tescos in Dudley is just as important as that as well.
OK, I think we can go to the audience now for the time we have left.
So, at the same time as the Only in England exhibit opened, the Photography Gallery had an exhibit of mass-observation artefacts and photographs from the 40s.
And I guess it was interested whether mass-observation had any influence on you, whether you might talk a little about how you view photography as single photos as art through to the other end as social anthropology.
I mean, I'm a great fan of mass-observation, but I didn't really know about it until maybe 25 years ago, and I remember going to Bolton, because Bolton, as you know, along with Blackpool was one of the main places where the studies were done,
and thinking at one point that I would do an update at Bolton, but that never quite took off because I think I've moved from the north of England.
You know, I think it's a fantastic survey. I mean, the fundamental thing about mass-observation is really text and observation. The photographs played a small but important part of that, but it wasn't really the raison d'etre.
It was mainly observation and text. Interestingly, when I did that, the Photography Gallery asked me to put forward a subject, and I chose funerals.
There's a lot of furor about this because, if you recall, in mass-observation is a wonderful Stanley Spencer picture of a funeral, a guy watching it.
I thought this would be interesting because it is one of the great taboos in society, probably not just the UK, but generally, that you don't photograph at funerals.
So, you know, if you go to a wedding, you expect to see a photographer. There's a wedding photographer employed. Everyone brings their cameras.
If you go to a funeral, you don't see any photographers whatsoever. Why does no one ever get employed to be a funeral photographer?
Are we saying it's a less important event? It's just part of the baggage of how we read photography in society, and part of my job, I hope, is to question that and to provoke that.
I remember when I put this down as a subject matter, a lot of people objected, which I thought was interesting in itself, despite the fact that there is this key image in mass-observation of a funeral.
I think a section of the show was on the your reading of Tony Ray Jones' user of space in the photograph, and just to talk a little bit on your experience of going through the archives in the Bradford, which is amazing.
Well, that was a fantastic experience going through the archive and seeing this, you know, all two and a half thousand of the contact strips.
And one of the things I learned and one of the defining things that I was looking for was some of the photographs where I felt this sort of spatial look and feel that Ray Jones was working on had been executed that perhaps ignored by him.
And I think that's probably the one thing that I learned from this, and if we see the new set of photographs that I presented with Greg, I think that's one of the defining elements within these pictures, is you really get a sense of this, the whole scene, and he will place things and people and objects within the frame, and you read it as a whole frame.
I think, for example, the previous generation of photographers in the UK, for example, picture post, they tended not to look at photographs like that, they looked at the subject matter, they placed the subject matter in the centre of the frame, and they weren't aware of that whole use of the frame.
And that's, if you like, the one thing that I learned from Ray Jones' iconic pictures, which are the first part of the show, which are the ones that I saw back in 1971, and this was exemplified and echoed when I had this opportunity to read the contacts and find more pictures, which executed that sort of idea and language so brilliantly.
Cardio Bessel offered him membership, and Tony thought about it for about a week, and he didn't like the idea of giving Magnum a 30%, and he felt that Magnum might influence his work, and he wanted to be concentrating on what he wanted to do in the UK.
And then, in 1968-69, he applied for Magnum, and they said, well, we've got Don McCullen, we've got Philip Charles Griffiths, and we've got Ian Barry, there's no room for another UK photographer.
My question is that when you were offered an associate membership of Magnum, did it change your attitude to photography?
What's wrong in not accepting it the first time? Thank you for the details. In August, September 1965.
Right. Thank you for the details about Tony Ray Jones and Magnum. I didn't know them so precisely, so it's very interesting to learn.
In answer to your question, no, it didn't change me whatsoever, and I think and would be surprised that any photographer would change if they became a member of Magnum. Magnum is set up to facilitate what the photographers want to be.
We are determined to find people with their own voice, and for them, within the world of photography, to continue to use their own voice and to find a way of hopefully generating a living from that to benefit both Magnum and themselves.
So it hasn't really stopped me whatsoever, but I'm really fascinated to hear that. I knew he'd applied, and I didn't know there were two occasions and the response that both of these generated.
There you go, so you say with some authority.
One of the things that struck me on looking at both Tony Ray Jones' photos and yours is the power of the gaze, and I'm just wondering if you think about how the people you photograph feel about your photographs,
and do you actually ask them before you photograph them, or are you standing outside looking at them?
Well, first off, in Hebden Bridge, I had a workshop in the centre of town, all the photographs that I took were exhibited, so as well as giving individual copies of the people in the photographs, like the ones in the chapel, people had had a chance to see them.
They seem to go down quite well. The other projects that I've done, like middle classes, that's less so whereby I immediately give the photographs back to the people in the photographs.
So each project has its own momentum, each project has its own way where you give photographs back.
Do you ever think ethically about intrusion?
Well, I think all photographers, to a certain extent, exploit and intrude. I mean, it's just the name of the game, but I don't see that's any reason why one would stop. I mean, I think and cherish the fact that we still are able, in the UK, to photograph in a public place and to exhibit and publish that in whatever way we like.
OK, so maybe two or three more quickly.
And we took photographs because we had relations at the funeral that we didn't see very often. So we celebrated and there's pictures of people wearing colourful dresses and all over the sofas and things, and people were actually horrified when we put them on Facebook and they said,
oh, do you have a party? And I said, well, it's actually with my mum's funeral. And people were really shocked by that.
I mean, I think the same response you got was very similar to the one I got with the Photographers' Gallery Commission or Request, and it does show all the time this baggage that we have in society that what is correct to photograph and what is incorrect.
For sure it depends on the contact. I mean, you were completely in control of that situation and you generated it yourself. That would be a very different thing than someone like you coming along to a funeral of someone you didn't know and taking photographs.
I mean, I have photographed at funerals, but of course, not only people that I know who have died and have been to their funeral, but I've actually photographed other people's funerals.
And of course, I've got permission from the organisers and relatives of the dead to do that.
But you say it was honest that people might find it better than the people who have photographed at funerals.
No, I mean, I understand why this is such an issue. I just gave this as an example of much of the baggage that this has shaped.
I don't think it's a genre. We're not talking about a genre here yet, are we? You can certainly start one.
In Mexico, well, Medinid is.
With the coalition coming to power and the politics of austerity, I feel like class is spoken about in a number of different ways in the newspapers and rhetoric.
I was wondering whether there are any photographers who have made some distinctive social commentary since the coalition came to power
and have made a commentary in class in the UK?
In the present day.
Difficult to determine that, isn't it? What do you think, Sean?
I think it's one of the great... I mean, I think photography is one of the great absences of our time, if you ask me.
I mean, it's very difficult to photograph an economic crisis, apart from the obvious icons of shop closing down.
But this is not an easy thing to translate into images.
There are clusters with Facebook and all the sharing sites, there's huge amounts of stuff going on.
In Ireland, there's been a lot of work, and it tends to be similar, which is all the empty housing states.
That has become another cliché.
I mean, it comes back to my observation that documentary photographers are not very good at documenting the world and society in which we live,
because they're too involved in finding their quirky.
That's why we have lots of pictures of mental hospitals and circuses, because visually they're very exotic.
So, if we think this is how we're represented, it's actually technically incorrect,
because photographers love to find A, nostalgia, B, quirky subject matters,
and they don't actually think or feel this responsibility to actually document society.
Now, I'm fully as prone to, you know, be seduced by nostalgia as anyone,
but I do try and think, especially when I have a big project like The Black Country,
about how to represent all of what's going on, rather than just the exotic and the nostalgic.
But I think it's one of the misfortunes of photographers, is they don't think about these things enough.
You know, when you're seeing students of photography and we see yet more pictures of their own family,
I mean, the subject matters are so, so obvious.
I wrote a project about, it's on my blog on my site, about photographic clichés,
a literally list 14 photographic clichés, and you will find a lot of the student work
that you see fits into these 14 categories quite effectively.
Coming from someone who'd like to pursue a career in social documentary photography,
I was just wondering what your opinion is on the need now for the social documentary photographer in the 21st century?
Well, I think there's a need to have the independent voice, you know,
that isn't homogenised, commercialised, part of the PR movement, that never before.
You know, I mean, I think the idea of the individual taking a view on the world
and offering it through photography, through writing, whatever, is absolutely essential.
Because, you know, we seem to be dominated so much by conglomerates, by PR companies.
I mean, fighting PR companies is one of the things I have to do all the time.
You know, they always want to stop you getting in, and then when they see the pictures,
they don't like this, they don't like that, because they have such a shallow view of what is acceptable.
So, the actual notion that an individual can get out there and make a statement about the world
and have that published and shown and exhibited is a great triumph.
So, good luck, and I hope you succeed.
We're going to have to end there, but I think I hope you've enjoyed as much as I have,
and thanks to Kate Fox and to Martin Parr.
I started with a quote from Tony Rajones, I think I'll end with one as well.
He said, I want my pictures to bite like the images in Benwell's films,
which disturb you while making you think.
I want them to have poignancy and sharpness with humour on top.
So, he definitely succeeded at that.
Thanks again.
